Some would say that its achievements are largely cosmetic. The pace of conceptual exploration in the history of cartography-searching for alternative ways of understanding maps-is slow. Here is a valley, there a swamp, and there a desert and here is a river that some curious and courageous soul, like a pencil in the hand of God, first traced with bleeding feet. This brown blot that marks a mountain has, for the casual eye, no other significance, though twenty men, or ten, or only one, may have squandered life to climb it.
CARTOGRAPHICA PURSES FULL
That coastline there, that ragged scraw of scarlet ink, shows neither sand nor sea nor rock it speaks of no mariner, blundering full sail in wakeless seas, to bequeath, on sheepskin or a slab of wood, a priceless scribble to posterity. Yet, looking at it, feeling it, running a finger along its lines, it is a cold thing, a map, humourless and dull, born of calipers and a draughtsman's board.
Were all the maps in this world destroyed and vanished under the direction of some malevolent hand, each man would be blind again, each city be made a stranger to the next, each landmark become a meaningless signpost pointing to nothing. Without me, you are alone and lost."Īnd indeed you are. A map says to you, "Read me carefully, follow me closely, doubt me not." It says, "I am the earth in the palm of your hand.
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